Businesses & Social Networks

There is no second opinion about the fact that most corporations have taken a very serious note of the existence of social networking sites and are keen to explore what it means to them and for their respective businesses. Everyone agrees that it is a new ball game and no one really is an authority. Everyone is learning. Some organizations have started tweeting and posting industry news. Facebook has digital images of advertisements and TV ads added in the video segment. Some corporates entertain comments and feedback from social network groups while most don't. Organizations such as police seem to conduct their business on Facebook. You could post on their wall pictures and videos of corruption or illegal license plate presentation or cars with red illegal red pilot lights and incidents, and you see police dept responding with either a promise to act or action taken.

I find organized business and social networks to be two extreme ends of a spectrum, with nothing in common. The reasons for my belief are as follows:

1) Organized business or corporates are focused on profits, market capitalization and shareholder wealth creation. They have short term and long term targets and metrics that revolve around these parameters. Social networks participants have no such end goals or targets they are obligated to meet as they participate in these networks. These groups revolve around, common interests and stuff that excites them. This stuff could be anything from Katrina Kaif to coffee to cricket to corruption to cancer etc.

2) Organized business or corporates are structured entities. When you join a corporate house, you are fit into an organization structure with clearly defined role and KPIs handed down that you need to meet in a pre-determined time frame. You can create a career progression and a development path along with the HR and walk that path based on merits of your performance. Social networks are different. Participation is voluntary. Each participant has very different goal and each individual can publish their motives and goals to garner support for the cause. People gather around the cause based on how well it emotes with them and the success is primarily a function of how many people believe in it and are willing to participate in an action needed to take the cause to its logical end. Case in point being the India against corruption drive. In a corporate house while there is a debate around ideas generated, once a decision is made, the enterprise collectively approaches to meet end goals even if a few key individuals were initially against it. The enterprise is supreme over individuals. On the social network no such rule is binding on participants of the social groups.people will walk away from a movement as quickly they walked in with support. All of this could happen in a flash and without warning.

3) Enterprises work on streamlining people, process and systems into a cohesive and well oiled machine to meet specific targets. Behind every successful delivery in the corporate house, there stands such a well oiled machine. Social networks are different. Participants of social network build resources and means of deployment of these resources on the fly as an idea starts capturing imagination. Idea originators tend to initially do this own their own and gather support around them unlike a corporate house where you get to present your ideas, work the back channel and make a pitch to secure resources. In the world of social networks, there are no key individuals at the helm and hence no back channel to work. You are not sure how your cause will emote with the social network participants. 

The habitats of corporate world and the social enterprise, even though most people play in both worlds, exhibit behavior at extreme end of every spectrum in each of these worlds. In such a scenario, does the enterprise culture and their way of life come in the way of an  enterprise participating in the social networks? Please note that most corporate employees are voluntary participants in a social network too and behave in a completely different manner on these networks.

In such a scenario how does an enterprise participate in the social networking world? Today there are tools available to gauge the mood of people and understand their opinions on  products, services and brands. Today one can:

1) Advertise on the social network

2) Gather feedback on their products, services and brand by virtue of their conduct in the real world

3) Post industry news and messages you want the world to know and read

Can enterprises move beyond these three existing possibilities and conduct business in the social network space as they do in the world of brick and mortar? How different will this be to the present e-commerce model? 

The difference between the traditional e-commerce and commerce in a social network will be inviting active participation of social network participants in the enterprise business without the constraints of operating under the shadow of an enterprise's people-process-system umbrella.

I think there is an opportunity here and a few key ingredients are needed to attempt this.

1) There needs to exist a group of people within an enterprise who should be able to lead their lives as social network inhabitants do. You need to feel and think like them to successfully emote and transact with them. A group that does not necessarily operate under the shadow of people-process-system umbrella.

2) Social media is full of data on lifestyle patterns of people, their moods, their needs, their family etc. While an small portion of this is direct data, most of the data needs to be interpreted and inferred from whats happening on these network. Enterprises need to develop social intelligence tools that will help them understand these.

3) The people-process-system engine will need some re-architecting, re-engineering or maybe even replacement to take on the task at hand. This is tough and easier said than done.

4) Social intelligence output needs to be funneled into the wheel of people-process-system to deliver personalized and custom made offerings to the social network inhabitants. A very important part of this delivery is not just the people-process-system wheel being flexible , but the user experience delivered thru touch points such as traditional web on desktop/laptop and mobile devices and tablets play a very key role. I foresee a user experience technology layer emerging in IT Architecture to meet this challenge. The social network being a connected world, word gets around at lightning speed on opinions around the experience, which begins with the user interface.

5) The part that all CIOs and IT teams are good at - the back end, needs considerable re-architecting for the purpose. Systems need to be flexible. With each initiative there will be change requests at a much higher frequency that before till such time IT teams go up the learning curve on dealing with the dynamics of social networks and the effects of it's demands on the backend systems and infrastructure. CIOs need to create a separate layer of technology overlaying the current architecture to address this issue. A layer that will work at or above the ESB layer, to begin with, one that absorbs the shocks of these changes and shields the systems below. Apps will need wrappers to both gain visibility and provide access from, social networking sites, and factor in multiple touch points such as mobile and tablets.For the lack of a better word, at present, I call this the user experience technology layer. I am working on one such project and will hopefully have more insights with the benefit of hindsight after I finish. I hope my project sponsor is not reading this, as I admit that I hope to have more learning from failure on this rather than amateurs luck!!

Integrating the output of social intelligence, into the user experience technology layer, apps, service and the people-process-system wheel will deliver meaningful results. I avoid the term success. Meaningful results  includes availability of enough data and intelligence on reasons of failure being available easily, to enable a more effective retry. More often than not, systems are not catered for such an endeavor. they are mostly architect-ed for a first time right scenario. hence you see the heart-burns when large projects go bad.  For conducting business on social networks, the people-system-process machine needs to be primarily be architect-ed for intelligence output on what went wrong or what could have been done better. On a social network, relevance of a particular people-process-system structure will need to change with the changing mood and theme  on these networks. You cannot sell insurance or a toaster the same way you did while the network was rejoicing the holiday season as opposed to the network debating intensely a people movement revolting a government policy or an issue. The user experience technology layer will have to sense these changes real time (powered by social intelligence) and offer a completely different user experience on top of the underlying fulfillment model.

My thought process on what actually constitutes this user technology layer and how does this integrate and inter-relate to the other layers of the architecture are still evolving and at the moment are very specific to the project at hand. I hope to generalize this layer to the best of my capabilities in the coming months and test its validity. In my view the differentiating factor between a transaction capable portal and business- enabled-transaction-fulfillment-capable social network  primarily rests with the way enterprises engage with consumers and the user technology layer will enable this. Once this happens, maybe there will be very little justification to incur costs on maintaining and managing a corporate portal as opposed to being present on various social networks. 

Can CIOs in India lead the change as businesses start to explore ways of participation in the social networking space. If there is anyone who is completely entangled in the present day avatar of people-process-system , it is the CIO and the business operations. They are measured on process inefficiencies and cost savings. Any technology implementation is more weighed against the possibility of contribution to bottom line. There are very little systemic incentives in place in corporates that can nudge a CIO or a COO in a direction enabling to operate outside of the current people-process-system corporate plan. It will take considerable sense of character and influencing ability to be able to sell such a thought to the management and board in India.